after months of hard work long nights test flights and crashed aircraft the winners of uae innovation challenge abu dhabi 2014 were announced on thursday at an official award ceremony at the hct abu dhabi men’s college.

the challenge concluded in a grand style amid cheering and warm support for all teams and fujairah dynamic (fujairah colleges) walked away with the first prize.

the team which comprised four male and two female students can now look forward to an all-expenses-paid trip to california courtesy northrop grumman a leading global security company providing innovative systems products and solutions in aerospace electronics information systems and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

the team members will tour northrop grumman facilities on the west coast as well as educational institutions with specialties in robotics and other areas of interest.

the competition’s overall winners couldn’t believe they had won the hotly contested event.

“this is just so amazing. it’s a fantastic result and we are so excited. this is our first prize in this competition and we won the first prize” team member mariam al meraikhi said.

members of teams demonstrate their aircraft during the competition.

“we had no idea we were going to win. it was due to our last flight on the second day when our plane flew really well and we didn’t lose any points” fellow team member mariam al hammadi said.

another beaming fujairah dynamic member abdulla rashid abdallah who has never been to the usa said: “i can’t believe it that we are going to the us. it is like being in a dream.”

“this is the first time for all of us as a team but we are from the same class in electronic engineering and we worked well together as a team” abdallah said.

“we did not know anything about this competition at the start but we asked questions and got good support from the mentors. we worked very hard from 1pm to 8am the next day five days a week while still doing our studies. if we wanted to do a good flight we had to work hard for it” he added.

special guest michael h. corbin us ambassador to the uae attending his third innovation challenge described the event as “bringing together the elements of education technology and cooperation towards the goal of the uae to be the global aviation hub of this huge region.

“this event underlines our support for the partnerships between education technology us corporations and emirati corporations working together for the future of this country. we are underling the future of the global crossroads with this important event.”

mary petryszyn vice-president international of northrop grumman aerospace systems said it “takes a village to make this competition successful and to make it the learning by doing experience that it is”.

“it is really impressive to see the growth of this project since the first one in 2011. over the four years we have seen 308 emirati students participate in it. that’s a growth of 50 per cent over the last three years” she said.

“the innovation challenge emphasises stem education which brings capability and capacity across various sectors in the uae. it really looks at the importance of team work and the transfer of engineering knowledge into real-world experience” petryszyn said.

petryszyn added that northrop grumman was “thrilled” to be able to work together with the parties involved and looked forward to an exciting innovation challenge in 2015.

douglas raaberg northrop grumman ceo in the uae said the competition emphasised the true nature of team work.

“everybody is part of the whole one team. we are very excited about this participation by the students” he said.

“the middle east will become a very important region for stem and through this competition we will see students become mentors mentors become leaders and leaders become corporate heads.”

the 4th uae innovation challenge ran from april 22 to 24 and hosted 96 engineering and aviation students from the higher colleges of technology and the khalifa bin zayed air college who made up the 14 teams. it encouraged students to apply their mathematical and scientific knowledge to a real-world engineering project.

the male and female teams learnt the complete engineering process of designing building and testing/flying unmanned aircraft as well as developing teamwork and presentation skills.

they also gain general and aeronautical engineering knowledge and an appreciation of unmanned aerial vehicles.

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